Here’s a story from Cycle Canada magazine that I thought you might enjoy.

“When New York-based trauma surgeon Dr. Mark Gestring started noticing that the motorcycle crash victims he was seeing in the E.R. were getting older, he and some colleagues at the University of Rochester Medical Center decided to do a study. They wanted to find out whether or not it was Gestring's imagination that less and less of his patients were stunt riding kids and more and more, baby boomers and seniors, many of whom had been riding powerful machines beyond their capabilities. Gestring's team gathered ten years worth of motorcycle accident related hospital statistics and found that from 1996-2005, the average age of a person injured on a motorcycle increased from 34 to 39. The fastest growing group of all the injured riders in the study was in the 50-59 range. The group in greatest decline, 20-29.

“Peter Jacobs, president of the Motorcyclists Confederation of Canada, claims that he sees a similar pattern here in Canada.

“’It’s a consequence of the baby boom generation,’ said Jacobs in Toronto Star interview. “’People were into riding when they were young, they stepped away when they had their families and now they’ve got a nest egg, so they buy a bike and get back into riding.’

“He doesn’t believe the study’s findings fully apply here though, adding that Canadian motorcyclists tend to generally be safer riders and, unlike the U.S., Canada has universal helmet laws. But he does agree with the study's main finding that aging motorcyclists are at greater risk and therefore need to exercise greater caution.”

Oookay...

Does the word “sanctimonious” come to mind there? But it’s not Cycle Canada that has the real problem here.

To start with, the actual number of older riders is rising faster than the accident rate – and that’s true in the US, in Canada and in Australia. So the raw figures don’t tell the whole story – in fact, older riders are safer. Gestring’s result is – well, I almost used a naughty word. It’s meaningless. It’s like saying that living is more dangerous today than in the Middle Ages because more people die every year. Err... there are a lot more people alive these days.

But let’s not quibble. Let’s do something constructive instead. Here’s my press release.

“When Peter Thoeming noticed in a Sydney Morning Herald cover story that Australia’s hospitals cause 4550 unnecessary deaths a year, he and some colleagues decided to do a study. Unfortunately, so far there has not been any funding forthcoming from the gummint...”
Physician, look to thine own backyard.

And Peter Jacobs, look at the figures before you insult what I presume is your parents’ generation.

Honestly...

Peter “The Bear” Thoeming